Tag: loco

UDS Blog-o-Rama: My first UDS

So, I’m attending my first UDS in my hometown of Copenhagen.

As a non-developer my primary focus has been on the community track, but in general it has been exciting just to be around all the great people who make Ubuntu happen.

I think the most important thing I will be taking with me from this UDS is the use of Launchpad Blueprints for team-management. My understanding is that so far Blueprints have primarily been used by development-teams to track and manage their work, but there is no reason for LoCo teams and other teams to not use Blueprints.

Thanks to Randall for organizing this blog-sweatshop-o-rama :)

Photo by: Will Scullin

Ubuntu 12.10 DVD’er

På vegne af det danske Ubuntu LoCo team har jeg modtaget Ubuntu 12.10 DVD’er.

I modsætning til tidligere er der ikke tale om CD’er, men DVD’er, og der er to udgaver:

  • Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop Edition
  • Ubuntu 12.10 Server Edition

Desktop udgaven kræver som minimum 768 mb ram og 5 gb harddiskplads. Server udgaven kører 64-bit, og har brug for 256 mb ram og 1 gb harddiskplads.

Hvis du kunne tænke dig en enkelt DVD for at undersøge om Ubuntu er noget for dig, eller hvis du har brug for en håndfuld DVD’er til uddeling, så send en e-mail med navn, adresse og hvilke/hvor mange DVD’er du har brug for.
Skriv til Søren på soeren-b-c@ubuntu.com.

Jeg vil så forsøge at sende DVD’erne hurtigst muligt og fordele nogenlunde retfærdigt.

Ubuntu Danmark want’s You for LoCo Contact

Vores nuværende LoCo Contact vil gerne bruge sin tid på andre gøremål (bl.a. oversættelse, support og redaktørarbejde på vores forum), så han har valgt at træde tilbage som LoCo Contact.

Vi har således brug for en ny kontaktperson, til at binde vores lokale arbejde sammen med det størrere internationale Ubuntu miljø.

Af konkrete arbejdsopgaver kan nævnes:

  • At følge loco-contacts mail listen, og videreformidle relevante informationer videre til det danske LoCo team.
  • At indsamle info om vores Ubuntu relaterede arbejde her i Danmark og skrive det i vores TeamReports.
  • To gange om året modtage vores CD’er (som vist fra 12.10 er DVD’er) fra Canonical, og stå for videre distribution til interesserede privatpersoner, LUGS og lignende.
  • Alt det andet – sammen med resten af LoCo teamet at holde det store overblik over hvad der sker af Ubuntu aktiviteter i Danmark, og kunne videreformidle kontakter til interesserede.

Arbejdet foregår selvfølgelig i samarbejde med foreningens bestyrelse, og resten af det danske LoCo team.
Et rimeligt engelsk er en forudsætning, da en stor del af kontaktpersonens arbejde består i kommunikation med resten af det internationale Ubuntu miljø, og denne kommunikation foregår (næsten udelukkende) på engelsk.

Hvis du har spørgsmål om hvad arbejdet indebær, så kontakt os endelig. Skriv enten her på vores forum, skriv til vores åbne mail-liste eller eventuelt til foreningens bestyrelse på bestyrelse(snabela)ubuntudanmark.dk

Hvis du har lyst til at prøve kræfter med posten som LoCo contact, så husk at give lyd, og duk om muligt op på IRC mødet på mandag d. 22. oktober, hvor vi officielt vælger ny LoCo contact.

Til sidst vil jeg gerne sige tak til Flemming for hans gode indsats og den konstruktive møde han træder tilbage på. Dette er netop måden at gøre det på, som formuleret i http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/leadership-conduct

Billede af kaochen2

Vil du være med til at lave den fedeste Ubuntu Release Party?

I april 2012 udkommer Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, med kælenavnet Precise Pangolin.
Da det er en LTS (Long Term Support) udgave af Ubuntu vil vi gerne markere udgivelsen lidt mere end vi gør med de almindelige halvårlige udgivelser.

Ubuntu Logo

Hvis vi skal nå at få stablet et (eller flere) større arrangement(er) på benene er det ikke for tidligt at komme i gang med forberedelsesarbejdet.

Derfor afholder vi et hurtigt IRC-møde mandag d. 19. december kl. 20 i #ubuntu-dk-moede på Freenode netværket.

Dagsordenen har tre primære punkter:

  1. Hvad vil vi?
    Brainstorm. Hvordan har vi lyst til at markere Ubuntu 12.04 udgivelsen?
  2. Hvad kan vi?
    Hvilke ressourcer har vi og hvad kan vi realistisk nå at få stablet på benene?
  3. Hvad gør vi?
    Hvem gør hvad efter mødet? Uddelegering af konkrete opgaver.

Vi skal altså tale om hvilken form vi vil have for vores markering af 12.04 udgivelsen. Skal det være cd uddeling? Skal der være oplæg om Ubuntu? Skal det være på nybegynder-niveau, eller skal det være for de mere garvede brugere? Vi har jo igennem tiden prøvet lidt af det hele…

Når vi (forhåbentlig) når til enighed om hvad vi kunne tænke os at lave, så skal vi have afklaret hvad der er realistisk at få gennemført. Vi arbejder alle frivilligt, og det giver ikke mening at forsøge at lave et arrangement, som kræver at 2-3 personer arbejder fuldtid fra nu til april, hvis vi ikke er nok til at lægge det arbejde som kræves.

Til sidst skal vi have planlagt det videre forløb, og her mener jeg det er vigtigt at vi får sat navne på hvem der gør hvad. Erfaringen viser at hvis det bare bliver besluttet at noget skal gøres, så bliver det ikke gjort, fordi alle antager at det er der nok nogen andre der tager sig af…

Hvis du ikke har mulighed for at komme med til mødet mandag, så skal du være velkommen til at give din mening tilkende – enten på vores mail-liste eller på forumet (eller i kommentarerne nedenfor).

Ubuntu Global Jam i København 2010

Så er det igen tid til Ubuntu Global Jam.

Endnu engang mødes Ubuntu og Fri Software entusiaster for at arbejde med at forbedre Ubuntu. I weekenden d. 27. – 29. august går det løse over hele kloden – og vi er også med i Danmark.
Vi mødes i København i Labitat, men det er også muligt at være med hjemmefra med en internet forbindelse.

Man bestemmer selv hvad man har lyst til at arbejde med, men Bugs og oversættelse er de mest oplagte kandidater – det er lige til at gå til.

Så hvis du har lyst til at være med, så kom forbi H. C. Ørstedsvej i weekenden, eller log på vores irc kanal og lad os snakke om hvad du har lyst til at arbejde med.

Der er også en Facebook begivenhed man kan tilmelde sig, så vi har et gæt på hvor mange der deltager.

Og så har Mark i øvrigt annonceret at Ubuntu 11.04 får kælenavnet Natty Narwhal (hvilket kan oversættes til Fikse Narhval). Det var i hvert fald gået hen over mit hoved – men jeg har også haft travlt med mange ting de sidste par dage…

Danish Team Re-Approved

As Amber already has pointed out yesterday a selected number of Ubuntu LoCo teams got approved and re-approved as official LoCo teams.

The Danish Team was one of the lucky teams to be re-approved.

As was pointed out during the meeting, the (re)approval process shouldn’t be so much about the technicality of being approved (although that is also be important), but just as much about sharing good ideas between LoCo teams. So I would like to use this blog post to direct the attention of Planet Ubuntu to something the Finnish teams has done, that I saw on their re-approval application, and then share an idea that we hope to carry out next month here in Denmark.

Write your parliament!

The Finnish team has written every member of the Finnish parliament about free software and included an Ubuntu CD in the letter. I think this is a great idea, and I think / hope that when Ubuntu 10.04 comes out we will do the same here in Denmark.

It also seems like a obvious thing to do on a higher level. What if every EU-based LoCo team promised them selves to mail their members of the European parliament in May or June, and make sure to send them a brand new 10.04 CD? To raise awareness among our elected officials and maybe get some press attention as well?

Of course similar actions can be taken in other parts of the world – get to it :)

Ubuntu Boot-Camp

Here in Denmark we are planning an Ubuntu boot-camp in May (or June). The basic idea is to meet in person and plan out the next 6 months of LoCo work (and of course have fun while meeting up!). You could think of it as a mini-UDS, just for out LoCo team.
Although many things can be planned by mail and irc meetings, you do get another connection and another feeling of ideas and the sharing of these, when you are face to face with people for a longer time period.

It is the first time we have this planned, so hopefully it will work out great! We will keep you posted of our experiences – good and bad alike. Feel free to get in touch if you are curious as to the more specific details of the plan.

Share ideas

Hopefully all the different fun and interesting ideas that pop up from all the Loco teams going through the (re)approval process will be placed on a wiki page somewhere, but until that happens I think we can all be better at sharing our ideas, plans and news of the work we do, either on the planet or the LoCo contacts mailing list.

… and congratulations again to all the teams that go (re) approved yesterday.

Open Source Days 2010

The Danish Ubuntu LoCo team had a community booth at the 2010 Open Source Days in Copenhagen last weekend.

The picture shows us (and the Exherbo guys next to us) setting up early Friday morning. Later in the day a Zebrapig banner joined the Ubuntu banner. All the community booths were located on the first floor, upstairs from the firms and organisations who had a paid booth. I didn’t take that many pictures, and the ones I did take didn’t turn out that great, but Flickr seems to have a nice collection if you are curious.

The new theme for Ubuntu Lucid had just been released the day before, so Friday, when we weren’t talking to people about Ubuntu, we spend a bit of time arguing for and against the new colour scheme.
We managed to hand out all our remaining Ubuntu 9.10 CD’s and Jesper gave a talk about ubuntu-dk.

As always, it was nice to meet up with the other people from the LoCo team. Although we do a lot of work together, it is often via e-mail or irc chat. Putting names to faces is always a pleasure. The beers both Friday and Saturday night were also a pleasure – beer and good company seldom lets you down.

We even managed to do some planning for the coming Ubuntu Global Jam.

Anders is set on doing an entire day of translating Sunday 28 at his place. And the plan is to do some more general bugwork on Friday and Saturday. Location is still to be decided, but properly Jesper or I will open our homes to the masses of Ubuntu volunteers. Stay tuned for more info about the Global Jam in Copenhagen / Denmark.

Tillykke Ubuntu

I dag bliver Ubuntu 5 år. Det var nemlig præcis d. 20. oktober 2004 at Mark Shuttleworth annoncerede den første udgave af Ubuntu, Ubuntu 4.10 “The Warty Warthog Release”.

Birthday Cake
Photo by chidorian.

Jeg har ikke selv været med fra starten, (det er faktisk uklart for mig præcist hvornår jeg begyndet at bruge Ubuntu), men det er tydeligt at der er sket meget siden 2004. Både i den tekniske udvikling, men så sandelig også i den community, som har vokset sig fantastisk stor omkring Ubuntu.

Her i Danmark er vi gået fra at være en mail liste (jeg tror først forumet og irc kanal kom til senere, uden at have gjort noget arbejde for faktisk at undersøge om jeg har ret), til at være et godkendt LoCo team, der yder support (forum, irc og mail), har afholdt adskillige Ubuntu Live! arrangementer – nu fast hvert halve år -, har deltaget i adskillige konferencer og så sent som i dag har vores podcast gruppe udgivet deres 2. podcast afsnit.

Det er dog vigtigt at huske på at Ubuntu ikke kan stå alene. Ubuntu bygger helt konkret på Debian, der er fra 1993. Linux kernen er også fra start 90’erne og GNU og FSF blev startet tilbage i 1984 / 1985. BSD (og Unix) kan trække historiske linjer endnu længere tilbage. Uden arbejdet udført af disse projekter og uden alle de frie software projekter der bliver arbejdet på hele tiden, rundt omkring på vores fælles klode, ville Ubuntu ikke have noget software at distribuere.
Så jeg vil gerne ønske Ubuntu tillykke med de 5 år (må de blive mange flere) og samtidig bruge muligheden for at takke alle der bidrager til fri og åben software.
Tak!

LoCo teams around the world

If you have been following the loco-contacts mail list you may have seen the recent hint that the coming LoCo Directory will be using the ownership of loco groups on Launchpad as a source of information about who is the LoCo contact for that group. This got me thinking.

How do different teams around the world organise themselves?

The assumption that the loco contact is always the same as the owner of the Launchpad group seems a bit simple. As teams evolve beyond a certain size, tasks get split, and the administration of the Launchpad group and the task of being Loco contact don’t necessarily go hand in hand.
So I’m curious – how do other teams get around delegating tasks and assignments?

In the rest of this blog post I shall try to give a short introduction to how we are currently doing things in the Danish team. I hope people from other LoCo teams will share their experience and ways of doing things as well. And of course pointers as to how we may organize the Danish team even better are very welcome!

Danish Team

Twice a month (except during holiday season) we have an IRC meeting. Everyone is welcome at the meeting, and this is where we discuss our future plans and events. If need be and we can’t come to a consensus on a topic, we have votes. One person, one vote. In essence, this is how the Danish team works currently.
ubuntu-dk-big

To take care of financial issues we have a board of trustees, including a treasurer. This makes handling money issues and making agreements with third parties a lot easier. Most people here (sponsors to make an example), will feel much safer donating money to an association, as opposed to some private person.

One a year (during spring) we have a general assembly, where we elect the board and the LoCo contact.

Of course this adds a bit of bureaucracy. We had to write some by-laws and we have to go through the entire hassle of having elections once a year. But it also secures that the board and the LoCo contact have a mandate from the community, and it makes it easy for the community to replace a LoCo contact or a board member, if they themselves can’t seem to realise that it’s time to step down.

That is how it works for us. Needs in other teams may be different, but I like the idea that once a year the position as LoCo contact is brought to debate and a vote, to make sure that (hopefully) the best person for the job is actually doing it.

So, how does everyone else do this?

64-bit vs. i386 and Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu CDs

EDIT: Søren points out that the server CDs are in fact 64 bit. However I think the point made below is still valid for the desktop CDs.

There were a few comments to my latest blog post about the lack of 64-bit CDs in the LoCo CD box, and the reduced number of Kubuntu CDs compared to the number of Ubuntu CDs.

I don’t agree with this critique. As I see it, the CDs are for handing out and passing on to people who are completely new to the Linux / (K)Ubuntu game. These people don’t necessarily know what hardware is in their computer and a question like “Do you have at 64 bit processor?” won’t make sense to them. Worst case scenario the question will make the user feel stupid (not a good starting point for a great user experience with the new software) or the user will answer incorrectly, and will end up with a CD that doesn’t work with their hardware.
Sure, support for huge amounts of ram is nice, but I still think it is rare that the average user has and needs this (yet). And the user who does need it will be aware of the difficulties, and know to either ask the person who hands out the CD or do the research of how to get 64 bit support.

As to the number of Kubuntu vs. Ubuntu CDs I know this is a issue that a lot of people feel very strongly about. But the fact is that the average user who has never used anything else than Microsoft Windows doesn’t know the difference between Gnome and KDE (or the difference between Thunderbird and Evolution or the difference between Emacs and Vi…). The big strength of FOSS is the choices. But that is also one of the weaknesses. When you come along as a new user you are in no way qualified to make the choice between several different software packages, if you have no idea what the differences is. So you need someone else to make that choice for you. And if you find out you prefer another program than the one installed by default, the solution is often not further away than Synaptic or a link on the web: install kubuntu-desktop
(This link installs kde on a Ubuntu system. If I remember correctly it needs to fetch 100MB or more and will make KDE your default desktop environment. If you don’t know what that means, you don’t need to do it.)

That is why I think it is fine that Canonical has chosen to ship more plain Ubuntu CDs than Kubuntu and no 64-bit CDs at all. It limits the number of choices that the use can’t be expected to make anyway. And if you are well informed enough to make the choice you should also be expected to know what to do to get the system you want.